A Dinner Theater Outing

Here we go on another trip in the Wayback Machine. Journey with us now into the dim and distant past – the holiday season of 1985.

President Sadie and other officers at a bank in Brighton wanted to do something to recognize Christmas, something festive and generous, for the bank’s employees.

Laura was one of those employees. So on a given night, a bunch of us dressed in our Sunday best and drove over to Boulder to attend a play. The play was “A Chorus Line” and the venue was the Boulder Dinner Theater.

(I don’t quite hate the word “venue.” I have used it correctly here. A football field is not a venue. A dinner theater is a venue. Overuse and misuse of the word is gauche. Case closed.)

Ponder these words, individually at first and then as a compound title: Theater. Dinner. Boulder. Dinner Theater. Boulder Dinner Theater.

Dinner? I like dinner. I especially relish a fine evening meal, thoughtfully and skillfully prepared, served after sunset, served unpretentiously, served hot, enjoyed without haste.

Theater. For most of my life, “theater” has been a word meant to describe a venue in which movies are shown.

I fell in love the first time in the balcony of a theater in Brighton in 1958. I have fond memories of that theater. To say nothing of the young lady.

But the potential connotations of “theater” are much broader, as I was to learn that night in Boulder. It can mean a place where live plays are produced.

Sometimes wars are fought in different theaters.

Hmm. Dinner Theater. That most likely means it’s going to be a place where dinner is served and a play is produced.

Because of the specter of this, I was already on pre-load. The sequence was wrong, all wrong, for one thing.

For proper sequence, we would first present the entertainment. Then the drinks. Then the dinner. But oh no, not at the Boulder Dinner Theater.

The dinner came first. I don’t remember the menu or even the entrée. I do remember the plates came and went at an alarmingly fast clip. I was hoping for a leisurely pace. No such luck. My plate disappeared from in front of me in a very few minutes. I was fed, but I really didn’t dine. I ate. I didn’t feast.

Then there’s “Boulder.” Just the word conjures up entirely different images nowadays than it did in childhood. Once upon a time, the word meant, “one big mamoo rock.” The word Boulder sets my teeth on edge, winds my preload spring even tighter.

Now the word Boulder means hordes of angry, aggressive, morally superior bicyclist assholes wearing pointy helmets, yellow sunglasses and shiny pants, glaring at me and giving me the one-finger salute.

It means you could get killed in a mob of these haughty, hateful greenie liberal peacenik vegetarian pantywaist jockstraps.

When they’re not harassing us outsiders from their lofty bicycle perches, the Boulder crowd is driving around in eco-friendly Subaru Outbacks and trendy, politically correct Priuses, looking down their aging noses at us outsiders.

Boulder. In the 1960s, Boulder gave an open invitation for hippies to move there. The hippies came. They took over. And that opened the door for gay beatnik bicycle people. They became snobs the likes of which you won’t see this side of Colorado Springs. Oh boy. But I digress.

So I found myself in Boulder. I didn’t know it at the time but I was preloaded to step on an emotional landmine. I’ve had my dinner. I’m here for the party.

Truth be known, I remember nothing of the play – I even had to ask Laura if she could recall the title.

I do clearly remember that I was blindsided, suddenly smacked in the teeth with a two-by-four pine board. Or something akin to that.

One of the actors was excusing his character’s behavior with a spoken line and a demonstrative physical action. “I guess I could always say I had polio,” the character said with a sneer.

With that, the actor left the stage, mocking me all the while. He dragged one leg behind himself. He limped exaggeratedly. His line echoed in my head: I could always say I had polio.

Boulder Dinner Theater. Laura and I were both so shocked at the tasteless, thoughtless line that we simply sat there as if frozen. I remember nothing else of that evening. We were both so hurt, so injured, that we couldn’t even rouse ourselves to get up and leave.

Poor Sadie. She had done her very best to show us a good time for the holidays. I did speak to Sadie about the damage done, and I did make sure she knew it wasn’t her fault.

You know me. I wrote to the Boulder Dinner Theater. I got a response that the offensive line had to stay in the play because of the copyright. I call balderdash on that, but who am I.

Entertainment

In about 1995, we threw out our television set. As time went on, we found ourselves going out to movies less and less frequently.

Laura would probably like to go to a circus, or a concert. But with time, entertainment holds less and less allure for me. I simply no longer need to be entertained.

One might say I blame this on the Boulder Dinner Theater and “A Chorus Line,” but I don’t think so. That event was certainly pivotal, but it isn’t the whole story.

I’m satiated with entertainment. I watched “Mash” so religiously that I lost track of whether I had seen a particular episode or not.

Do I need humor, laughter? Certainly. This is why we have cats.

But for the most part, I simply do not need to be entertained.

Perhaps I am unusual in this way.

(Credit where it’s due, the Wayback Machine was featured on cartoons titled “Rocky the Flying Squirrel.”)

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Word of the Week: Elitist. He’s self-appointed to the most carefully selected part of a group, as of a society or profession. It’s from the French, elite, choice or select.